


camille raquin at the mortuary

by s0dafucker



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Roleswap, Sickfic, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:21:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29724087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s0dafucker/pseuds/s0dafucker
Summary: the operator takes something out of alex, at jay's old house, and brian plays doctor like the shitty battlefield medic he is.
Relationships: Alex Kralie/Brian Thomas | Hoody
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	camille raquin at the mortuary

**Author's Note:**

> (post-72 but alex is jay/brian is tim)

alex rolls over and blinks open his eyes when brian comes in, and he looks fucking awful. he's pale, too pale, corpse-white, and though he tries to smile with his mouth it falls short of his bleary eyes, unfocused without his glasses and glazed over- he doesn't look like he's entirely capable of speaking, and brian's chest tightens painfully.

'hey,' he says, but it's just a whispery creaking sound, a rasp that's quiet even in the silent room.

'hey,' brian says, 'i got food.' he's pressing the inside of his wrist to alex's forehead before he's even entirely processed that's what he's doing, the thin skin to the hot place where alex's skull is, his brain, the secret pieces of him that are boiling over. 'how d'you feel?'

'hurts,' alex whispers, coffin-dust, wincing like it's too loud in here, too bright under the cheap yellow fluorescents.

'you want some of my meds?'

alex nods, a jerky little motion, marionette with the strings cut; brian goes rummaging in the bedside drawer, comes out with the bottle. he'd let alex take one himself if his hands weren't trembling trying to sit up, fawn's legs trying to steady a newborn body, all of him sharp and carved-out like a husk of something, like he's just crawled out of a cicada-skin on the dirty ground. 

brian cracks open a water bottle- turns the light off- sits back down across from alex and his wet-shiny gaze reflecting the glow of streetlights through the blinds. 

''s like… my bones are wrong. put together wrong. it all jus' grinds together.' alex's throat sounds like it's scraped raw, and brian has the faintest urge to reach inside him and bandage it from the inside out. he's oddly delicate, when everything's stripped away, just alex and his sweat-damp hair and his narrow chest rising and falling with his shallow breathing. 'you ever feel like that?'

brian nods. alex mirrors him, a tiny dip of his chin, the fever-glazed blacks of his eyes moving sluggishly down down down to the pill bottle in brian's hand and just as slowly beginning the trek back up. 

brian takes his chin in one hand, tilts his head up just slightly- his face is warm, his mouth slack so brian's fingers can slip easily between his chapped lips and set the pill gently on his lax tongue. the corner of his mouth tilts up like he's trying to smile, but it's barely a twitch of movement before it slides back into shadow like the rest of him. like a jack-o-lantern in the dark, the orange halo of the light outside catching in all the candle-holes of his face, filling out the blackness of his dilated eyes, his inviting tongue with the capsule like a tab of acid, like a communion wafer. 

_lord jesus thank you for your precious blood,_ brian thinks, absently, like it would be a joke if he had the energy to spare, and tilts the water bottle down alex's throat.

his adam's-apple stutters with his swallow, the twist of his mouth into a wince, but he doesn't cough, just reaches up and touches his chin where brian's hand was like he doesn't quite understand what changed.

'you hungry?' brian asks, near-whispering, because the endless black tunnels of alex's eyes seem to glow with a want for something, under the haze of pain, the faint film keeping him stranded just outside the world of the living. he'd be like a ghost, sitting bent in half on the white-cold sheets, if heat wasn't radiating out from him like blood in water, if his pain wasn't so physical that it's nearly palpable in the air. brian's head aches sympathetically if he looks too long, and he doesn't know if it's real or just the contagious nature of alex's misery. 

alex shakes his head, just the smallest inclination, and he reaches out to grab a fistful of brian's shirt collar; 'c'mere,' he whispers, and brian wouldn't be able to refuse even if he wanted to.

alex is blisteringly hot in all the places they're touching skin-to-skin, like something is boiling over in the seams of him, like the stitches holding him together are beginning to tear and the molten insides of him are spilling out. brian doesn't mind. 

he curls up, folding the long bits of him- gangly white limbs, sharp bluish pale joints- into something fetal and small, the solidity of his skull like blown glass where it presses against brian's sternum, impossibly delicate.

''m having nightmares again,' he mumbles, his tongue too thick and clumsy for his mouth. 'ones where you die. or i die. or jay dies.'

brian's face scowls without his permission, and alex shifts- 'guess that's not a nightmare, really.' his shoulder blades are flint-steel, under brian's hands, rolling under his skin when he moves. ''s awful, though. makes me feel like shit. i keep wakin' up, while you're gone, all sweaty and shit. jus' crying. like- like it's the end of the world or somethin', 'cause i think somebody's dead.'

he presses closer, his mouth and his nose and all of him flush with brian's chest, where he can feel alex's breathing, the barely-there whistle of it, the suggestion of his dried-out sinuses. is it weird, to feel affectionately about the labored way your lover inhales, the creaking of their worn-out lungs that tells you for certain that they are human, they are fragile, they are breakable and scooting closer to you in bed because they believe you'll keep them safe. 

neither of them speak, for a long time. brian strokes the notches of his spine, thinks about how it juts out from his skin like he hasn't had a proper meal in years because he hasn't, really. neither of them have. alex's hand on brian's shirt tightens, his breath goes taunt in his throat; he sniffles, quietly, the quick shallow breathing of something in new, fresh pain, the wet gasp of something wild with its leg in a fox-trap. 

his mouth finds brian's, in the dark, just a startling press of his hot teeth and tongue and a funeral-quiet whisper of _i love you i love you_ into the space where they exhale out of sync, where their breath entangles and brian's steady pulse beats through his tongue. 

in the morning, he's a bit better. he accepts a pill in the same limp way, letting brian move him, letting brian take care of him; ''m sorry,' he murmurs, into the dark that isn't dark enough, the cheap curtains that can't completely keep the watery glow of the sun out, 'we've been here too long.'

brian presses his lips to alex's forehead, the inside of his wrist to alex's flushed cheeks- 'it's alright. he has to know you're sick. even if he could find us, i don't think…'

alex smiles, in a crooked kind of way, like he doesn't quite remember how. 'you're sweet.'

brian isn't lying, not really, but it's not a theory he's willing to test; jay's mercy is unreliable at best, and brian only thinks his morals extend to not murdering alex in his bed because he knows brian would hunt him to the ends of the earth. the camera's been sitting unused on the dresser for days now, but brian's tweeted once or twice, something vague about _alex isn't doing well._ jay knows what happened. he must have an idea of the state they're in.

'i just think he'd rather wait until you can walk,' brian says, helping him into a sweatshirt with the hope it'll help break his fever. 'i don't think he'd slit your throat while you're sleeping.'

alex _mm-hm_ s, arranging himself more comfortably in brian's oversized clothes; he's never had a problem being matter-of-fact about his own death, something brian envies and appreciates in equal measure. 'i'll feel better when i can hold my gun,' he says, looking down at his trembling hands. 

'd'you remember anything?' brian asks, letting him tangle their fingers together, borrow some of brian's steadiness. he shakes his head.

'just going down to the basement,' he murmurs, 'and then waking up here. i don't even remember seeing it.'

'there's a tape. i cut most of it, before i uploaded it, 'cause you were in pretty bad shape. i figured you wouldn't want that out there.'

(brian would've burned the tape by now if he didn't think alex might want to see it eventually, might want to fill in the gaps; it makes him sort of sick, the grainy footage of him helping alex into the car because of how badly his legs were shaking, the painful, too-small sound of his voice. the video that made it to youtube omits everything between seeing it and checking into the hotel, with only a title card letting everyone know _we're fine._ )

alex smiles, wry and shaky, the scratch of his fingernails on brian's palm strange and intimate. 'thanks.' they're not holding hands, really, just touching, just feeling each other's hearts beating, just watching the delicate sweep of his eyelashes on his cheeks when he blinks. brian is really truly in love with him, huh. with this man who's almost gotten him killed. this half-dead thing wearing his clothes. 'can i have a kiss?' alex asks, almost coy, like the fever-tint to his cheeks is just a blush, and how could brian ever say no to him. 

**Author's Note:**

> title from cant cool me down by csh.... one day i'll write a full roleswap but for now its just hurt alex hour


End file.
